Don’t Believe Everything You Read…

Seriously though, I (finally) got my hands on a copy of the 2008 Baseball America Prospect Handbook, and found a few discrepancies in the Scott Patterson entry.

The write-up lists Patterson as having played for the “homeless” Barnstormers, which isn’t true. While he did play for the Lancaster Barnstormers, they were never homeless.

As someone who has covered the Atlantic League for six seasons now, I can tell you that the Road Warriors were the only traveling team in the league. In fact, Patterson started the inaugural game at Clipper Magazine Stadium on May 11, 2005.

In the Lancaster Barnstormers Inaugural Season DVD, the elaborate and somewhat ridiculous sequence in which a group of kids run from the outfield to deliver the ball to Patterson after an extensive video sequence is shown.

The second issue with the Patterson write-up is that his statistics are incomplete. He was picked up in June of the 2006 season by the Yankees, and the first half of his season is not mentioned in the write-up or acknowledged in the statistics, although his 2005 numbers are.

For the record, Patterson went 2-0 with an 0.78 ERA and 14 saves in 20 games for the Barnstormers before choosing the Yankees to sign with. He also had an offer from the Baltimore Orioles, but he told me that he chose the Yankees because Baltimore’s offer was to pitch in Single-A.

Outside of that, yeah…the book is pretty much a gold mine of goodness. You can look forward to myself and a “special guest” doing an extensive breakdown of the Top 30 Yankees prospects over the next few weeks.